DIY Hanging Bookshelf

I was decluttering the house, but I put that on hiatus for a couple weeks while I built several pieces of furniture to help with organizing things. This is one of the pieces I built.

Last Christmas I decided it was time to replace the drop cloth advent calendar I made a few years ago, and I lucked out by finding a cute advent calendar with buckets at PotteryBarnKids. I don't see it on the site now, but I was able to get it on sale.

I couldn't find a full picture of the advent calendar, but you can see the right edge of it, 

with the studs marked on the wall above so I could hang it

While cute, it is heavy and it had to be attached to the studs, but the hooks didn't line up with our studs. So I screwed a 2x3 into the studs and then put screws in the 2x3 for the advent calendar to hang from. It worked great, but after Christmas I didn't want to remove the board since I knew we'd need it again the next Christmas. And I didn't want to be screwing and unscrewing screws into the drywall.

a board with screws sticking out of it- so aesthetically pleasing!

After 6 months of thought, I finally decided to make a hanging bookshelf that can hang from the 2x3 11 months of the year. Come December I can remove it and hang the advent calendar.

I drew up an angled bookshelf plan, then decided to google around and see if I could find any other ideas.

This one was close, but it sits on the floor and it wasn't tall enough. This would be easy to fix, but still....

source

Then I saw this one. This is almost exactly what I was thinking, but without being angled from top to bottom.

found on houzz

I like the curved edges at the top, but I decided to add a lip to each shelf and lower the dowels a little. Since the bookshelf will be hanging over a chair rail I would also need to add a backing to make sure the books don't fall out the back.

After figuring out the measurements and shelf placement, I got to work.

materials:

2x3 @ 8'

1x2 @ 18'

1/2" dowels @ 9'

1/4" plywood I had sitting around from another project

process:

I cut the 2x3 in half and curved the upper edges, then made four shelves out of the 1x2s.

I figured out the placement of the shelves and dowels.

The inspiration picture has the dowels attached to the front of the bookshelf, but we have a 1-year-old boy who would rip those off as soon as he discovered them. I wanted them to be a bit more sturdy so I countersunk them into the sides of the bookshelf. I marked the drill bit so I wouldn't drill too deeply, then drilled holes in the sides of both 1x3s for the dowels to go into. 

Then I put it all together. I glued and nailed the shelves and dowels in place on one side, then repeated on the other side.

Put together and waiting for the backing and some paint.

and yes, I still need to touch up the door around the new handle

Backing on. I made the backing lower than the sides because I didn't want it ending randomly. I figure the top edge will be covered by whatever books are on that shelf.

However, I hit a snag. Apparently I can't do math and/or measure properly.

See the problem? I'm really not sure how I managed to mess up the measurements this bad. I thought about just leaving it as-is and hanging the shelf high enough that it would rest on the window sill. But that would put it a little higher than I really wanted, and it would forever bug me.

So I re-measured and then broke out the circular saw. After chopping off 2 inches, I made a new side. I was going to re-use the old one, but decided it would be a huge hassle with the dowels being glued into the sides. Digging out the old dowels that are nailed in would be messy and not leave it looking nice. Easier to just cut a new one.

And now it fits!

I placed some board books on the lower shelves for River, and some chapter books on the upper shelves for Sunshine.

Useful, practical, looks nice, and it didn't cost much to make or take too long to put together. Definitely a win-win in my book!

 And here's a shot from the front hall, looking into the library:

One Year

Holy cow. It's been a year since this little guy was born. It does not feel like it's been that long at all, but if you look back at the past pictures and posts, you can see just how much he's changed and grown. So much in such a short time.

This is the last of the monthly collages, for which I am grateful. The last couple months they've gotten more difficult as River has gotten more active. He'd rather wiggle and move where he wants rather than where I want. I have quite a few of these:

and these:

He is turning into such a busy little boy. He wants to explore everything!

Progress this month:
River is the proud owner of 6 sharp little teeth- middle two top and bottom and right side top and bottom. His left side top and bottom teeth have just about broken through. In fact, this morning I noticed that the bottom tooth has started coming through his gum, so even though it's a couple days past his birthday, he now has 7 teeth in. If you look hard you can see the three on top and the two bottom middle teeth.

River loves climbing stairs and has gotten super-speedy at it. If the gates are open we have to keep a close eye on him or he'll make a beeline for them. When we catch him up a couple steps, he always gives us a mischievous grin. Shades of things to come, I'm sure :)

He is walking more and more and is so close to crossing a room by himself. We were kind of hoping he'd hit it by his birthday, but that hasn't quite happened yet. Soon enough we'll be wishing for the days when he could only crawl....

River really needs his hair cut. Now that he's had his birthday, it's time for a haircut. We've put it off because I know he won't look like our little baby once we cut off his baby curls. It's getting out of hand though.

He does this eye scrunch thing. We're not sure if he's winking, or if he thinks it's part of smiling, or what. But he definitely does it on purpose and it's hilarious. If we scrunch our eyes at him, he'll usually do it back at us. You can kind of see it in the pictures below.

We had a picnic while we were in Tennessee and River tried (unsuccessfully) to eat an apple. He couldn't quite get his teeth into the skin, despite his best efforts.

River really likes helping me when we're in stores. The picture on the left was in Lowes and the one on the right was in Ikea. At IKEA he was in the carrier, but he reached behind to hold onto the shopping cart- look at that smile "I'm helping!" Such a sweetie.

Despite my efforts to keep River from sucking his thumb, he is indeed a thumb sucker. However, he only does it at night when he's tired. He's usually in bed when he pops it in, but if we catch him sucking it outside of bed, we know it's way past time to get him into bed. As we can see in the pic below.

River loves his daddy and enjoyed riding on his shoulders way more than being strapped to him in the carrier.

Sunshine has had fun playing with his hair- you can see a swoop to his bangs in the picture below courtesy of Sunshine while in the car on the way to the chiropractor.

I love this: Sunshine plopped him in the box with her, but as you can see, he was not impressed at first. I was able to get a smile out of him eventually, but it didn't last long, and he was done.

River's discovered the play kitchen and thinks it's great fun. Guess I need to finish taking off the pink flowers- good thing they're just vinyl cutouts :)

PicMonkey couldn't handle a full year of collages (13 separate collages if you include the newborn collage), so here's the first three and the last three

11 months, 10 months, 9 months, 8 months, 7 months, 6 months, 5 months, 4 months, 3 months, 2 months, 1 month, 2 weeks, birth

Sunday Funny

A Tale of Two Nannies

new Nanny, old Nanny

When I was decluttering the basement, I found a new Nanny I'd purchased on eBay in the event that we needed to replace Sunshine's current Nanny.  The difference between the two is almost comical.

you can tell how much Sunshine has loved her Nanny

old Nanny is permanently grungy, despite being washed on a fairly regular basis

I asked Sunshine if she wanted to trade in for the newer model, but she declined. We've always been very open about replacing Nannies and how many she's had, but the current Nanny (#5) has been around for quite awhile.  She suggested we let River have the new Nanny. So New Nanny lives in River's room and Sunshine keeps putting New Nanny into his crib. He promptly chucks New Nanny out, along with any other stuffed animals she's decided he "needs". River does not have Sunshine's love of stuffed animals, but if she has anything to say about it, that will change :)

Colonial Williamsburg

September was our month for field trips. We went to Tennessee for a half marathon and to explore  Great Smoky Mountains National Park, but before that, we went to Colonial Williamsburg. CW was hosting their annual homeschool days, and we were able to score some deeply discounted tickets. We were also able to pay a deeply discounted homeschool days rate at Great Wolf Lodge.

River modeling his complimentary wolf ears- he wasn't super impressed with them

Great Wolf Lodge is a fun hotel with lots of things for kids and families to do: indoor waterpark, arcade, spa, MagiQuest, and lots more. We really only took advantage of the indoor waterpark since we were splitting our time between GWL and CW. It was raining the day we arrived, so instead of traipsing around CW, getting soaking wet, we splashed around in chlorinated water and got soaking wet. The waterpark was lots of fun with a wave pool, giant slides, lazy river, kiddie pool, giant splash zone, and more. My only complaint was the amount of chlorine used- since it was indoors, you could almost taste the chlorine as soon as you entered.

Sunshine thought the wolf ears were great, but the bunk beds in the kid's room were even better

The next day it was overcast and sprinkled off and on, but it didn't pour, so we explored Colonial Williamsburg. We helped Sunshine figure out the clues for RevQuest, and that helped us hit a lot of the main points of CW. We successfully passed on the needed information and helped the revolution proceed :)  We thought RevQuest was a great way to get kids (and adults) more involved and interested in colonial times and the revolution. In that way, it was very similar to the Junior Ranger programs Sunshine does at the national parks.

getting important information needed to find the next clue

Sunshine is in the boonie hat and pink t-shirt

CW is closed to vehicular traffic. above are some of the brick homes we walked past. a number of the homes are privately owned and lived in and not open to the public. not sure I'd want complete strangers walking past my house and trying to peer into the windows...

Revolution in the streets- you can see the people in period dress scattered through out the street and crowds

trying out the pillory. the rain was picking up again at this point

view of the Governor's palace from part way down the Palace Green, through the rain

The following day was our last day in the area, but before heading home we went back to CW to see some things we'd missed the first day. We toured the Governor's palace- the entryway had all these interlocking swords attached to the walls. Very cool, but we forgot to take pictures of it :(

better view of the Governor's palace

Mr M didn't enjoy kneeling on hard wood- "hurry up and take the picture!"

trying out the stocks- Sunshine was too short to sit on the bench and still have her feet through the holes, so she had to sit on the ground :)

the stocks also had a place to handcuff someone to the post. notice the lower set at Sunshine's level and the higher set above them.

we saw this lady and her team of oxen several times- they were dragging downed tree limbs to (somewhere I can't remember) so they could be cut up and burned. possibly the brick yard or the cooper's to fuel the fires they used.

getting silly with the wood curls at the cabinetmaker's 

and just to show that I was there too, here's a group photo under a tree on the Palace Green

We all enjoy history (ok, maybe River isn't quite into it yet, but give him time...), so we had fun visiting the old houses and shops and watching people make things the way they were made in colonial times (silver, dresses, bricks, fine woodworking, barrels and buckets, and so on). Though we wouldn't have wanted to be put in jail back then- it would have been very unpleasant, especially if the weather was very hot or very cold.

It was all very interesting, but we're not done- we need to go back to the Williamsburg area since we didn't have time to visit Jamestown Settlement or Yorktown Battlefield.

October Race Plans

Last night I finally signed up for the two races I plan to run this month. One is a 5k trail run in a week and a half, and the other is a 5k Halloween run at the end of the month.

I know I said I wasn't sure about trail runs after the last one, but it's only a 5k (much more manageable than 15k!) and it's a fundraiser for our local Boy Scouts. So I'm willing to give it a try. If it's too rough, then I won't do it again.

The Halloween run is the same one I've done the last few years (2013, 2012, 2011). Sunshine has done it twice and Mr M has done it once. This year we're all participating- even River. He was strapped to my tummy last year, but this year he'll be riding in the carrier on Daddy's back. I'm currently working on the costumes that we'll wear for the race and our ward activity, and let me just say, they will be epic! Yes, I'm allowing my OCD overachiever side to come out on this, and that's ok :)